Officially, spring started a few weeks ago. But in our Edina, MN headquarters, more than half a foot of fresh snow would disagree.

Fortunately, for those of you that use well water, this means that you’re not too late to get the spring season off on the right foot!

Below, find your well water maintenance checklist to help you prepare for the arrival of the real spring:

1. Test Your Well Water
In spring, as snow run-off starts to flow and organic matter starts to decompose, your well can become a parking lot for all sorts of nasty impurities. Knowing what type of impurities you are dealing with doesn’t just protect your own peace of mind, it can protect the health of everyone living in your home.

Fortunately, several counties and townships will offer you help with this maintenance step by providing quick and accurate well water testing services. These testing services often include complete laboratory analysis and can be had for a reasonable fee. An example of services offered in Washington County, Minnesota may be found here.

You can also conduct your own testing via do-it-yourself well water test kits, including the kit from Well Safe pictured to the left, that you can find for sale at our online store.

2. Check Your Pressure GaugesInstalling a pressure gauge inline before and after your well water filter housings is an invaluable maintenance step that can help you more quickly get your well ready for spring and more easily monitor your water quality throughout the year.

By monitoring your pressure closely with a gauge, an example of which we’ve included below, any noticeable water pressure drop will be displayed. Our advice? When you see a 10 to 15PSI loss of pressure, whether the calendar says spring, fall or anytime in between, it’s time to change your well water filters.

3. Sanitize!Put bluntly, well water can get a little funky. Sometimes this means the presence of harmful bacteria while other times it simply means an unpleasant but ultimately innocuous sulfur or egg smell. Whether or not testing reveals the presence of harmful pathogens, doesn’t mean your well water maintenance checklist should skip over sanitation.

Using a DIY well water sanitizer in the spring can help eliminate harmful bacteria that can have an impact on your health, in addition to unpleasant odors that can have an impact on your quality of life.

4. Stock Up on O-rings and LubricantO-rings are the most inexpensive part of a water filtration set up, but also one of the most costly items to not have if something goes wrong. Occasionally an O-ring may burst or even get crushed by improper re-installation of water filters (trust us, it happens.)

Having extra O-rings and O-ring lubricant on-hand will allow you to stop any potential leaks and/or get your system back online quickly without having to make an emergency call to your plumber. Note that most manufacturers recommend replacing O-rings once per year.

5. Replace Your Well Water FiltersMany manufacturers of whole house filtration systems recommend a three month replacement time for sediment filters, 6 month replacement time for carbon filters and two year replacement time for reverse osmosis membranes. As always, this will depend on the water quality in your well and water usage in your home.

Depending on the well water maintenance and filter replacement schedule you’ve established for yourself, you may not need to replace every filter you are currently using when the calendar strikes spring. But trust us on this one, getting yourself onto a seasonal well water filter replacement schedule will make your life that much easier. That said…

6. Update Your Calendar…even the best of us have trouble adhering to seasonal schedules or even remembering the last time we changed our water filters. Adding quick notes to your calendar, reminding you of the next time you need to replace your filters, can only help.

Once you have all the products you need, including test kits, O-rings and well water filters, the well water maintenance steps above shouldn’t take you more than an afternoon to complete. When it comes to the quality of your drinking water, this is time well spent.

What other well water maintenance steps do you take to get ready for spring? Leave a comment below and we’ll add to a future checklist. Also, if you have questions on any of the steps or products lists above, please feel free to call our customer service department at 1-800-277-3458.

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Are you a veteran, currently serving in the Armed Forces, or are you buying a gift for a veteran or soldier? Use the discount code ‘VETERAN’ at checkout to take 5% off your entire order!

As you may know, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning which means we have six more weeks of winter. But what does that have to do with water?

Residents of Long Beach, California are known to await the results of the Groundhog Sprinkler each year. If the sprinkler has a shadow, they can wait six weeks to start watering their grass which saves over 200,000 gallons of water per hour. bit.ly/1K3LPjF